60 Years Later: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Director: John Ford
Starring: John Wayne, James Stewart, Lee Marvin
Running time: 123 minutes

Despite having successes in a variety of other genres (war, romance, biopics), since he directed the masterful Stagecoach in 1939, John Ford was universally known for making Westerns – he even went so far as to introduce himself at the Directors Guild by saying “My name is John Ford. I make Westerns”. Over the decades, he made a number of beloved and critically acclaimed Westerns including The Searchers and My Darling Clementine, but none are as large in scope and as beautifully realised as his 1962 masterpiece The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

For the first time in both of their careers two Hollywood legends, James Stewart and John Wayne, appeared on screen together for the first time. Stewart plays a famous United States senator, Ranse Stoddard, who alongside his wife, Halie (Vera Miles), has made the long journey back to a town he used to live in to bury the body of an old friend. That friend is Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), who has died a nobody and not a single person who lives in the town can remember him, causing the local newspaper to ask Stoddard why he is such a big deal. Reluctantly he tells them the tale of Doniphon and how he used to be a legend who ultimately fell from grace due and drifted into obscurity.

Stoddard isn’t just famous for being a politician, he’s known for killing a brutal outlaw named Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) around 25 years ago. When Stoddard first moves to Shinbone, he declares he wouldn’t use mindless violence to solve his problems, but would rather use the law to put Valance behind bars. This idyllic mindset slowly crumbles as the harsh reality of the West closes in around until he comes face to face with the legendary criminal himself. Myth making is a theme constant throughout John Ford’s work, with this film he does something different. He deconstructs the myths of the West that he had a large part in forming, and what it means to actually be a legendary figure.

Ford ditches his usual Western tropes for this film and instead adopts a more sombre tone, creating something that would go on to influence Spaghetti and Revisionist Westerns. Monument Valley is an iconic Ford location with its deserts stretching out for miles, although here we have a small town that is filmed entirely on a soundstage giving a more claustrophobic feeling to the film. Also gone is Ford’s bold use of technicolour and replaced with black and white. The lack of colour was a crucial decision for this film as it really helps highlight the darkness and the shadows of the small town. Using black and white gives it a less romantic and more hard boiled noir feel which suits the film as it often feels more like a political thriller than a Western.

It goes without saying that Stewart and Wayne are as charismatic and engaging as always, but Wayne gives a particularly good performance, especially in the final act of the film where his melodramatic and more emotional side is revealed. However, the real star of the show is Lee Marvin; he is absolutely astounding in the role of the sadistic bandit for hire. Marvin’s physicality and marine background certainly help him bring a different type of horror than any actor could have done. His weapon of choice is just as terrifying as the man himself, many villains would just shoot their victims but Valance instead uses a steel plated whip to beat people with an intense ferocity.

In many ways each of the central characters embodies a different ideology: Doniphon is the old, traditional West that tries to solve its problems with guns and fighting; Stoddard is the new, liberal democracy that was brought over from the East; Valance is the guiltless power of capitalism that wants to keep the farmers under their control, using brutal violence to scare the inhabitants of the town into submission; and Halie is the American population who fell out of love for the Old West and in love with the new liberal democracy, established by her love triangle with Stoddard and Doniphon. All of these archetypes work so well and introduce themes that Revisionist and Spaghetti Westerns would adopt, before they became popular in the years to come.

Whilst this film is indeed Ford’s most pessimistic film, there is still a layer of warmth and sentimentality that sits underneath its hard exterior. Apart from the character of Valance, he and the screenwriters give each character enough humanity to make you genuinely care about them even when they do wrong things or make mistakes. Communities that live on the fringes or fight off against outside violence or oppression is often a recurring theme in Ford’s work, the idea of people banding together in solidarity often feels like something deeply important to him. In some ways this clashes against his typical Republican leanings, which are often more individualistic in nature, and is one of the many things that makes him a fascinating director; someone whose films are often filled with subtlety and face the abundant contradictions of American life.

During the final ten minutes of Liberty Valance, a character says the now iconic phrase “This is the West, when the legend becomes fact – print the legend!”. A phrase that works both for the legend of the Western genre and for Ford’s career itself, something which is now littered with rumours and different accounts of what he was really like as a director and as a man. Thematically and visually this film feels as fresh as it did 60 years ago and it remains forever relevant, with its accurate representation and brutally honest depiction of the intersection between politics and violence.

Did you know? During the film's production, John Wayne was due to be given an award and asked John Ford to present it to him. When Ford stumbled over one of the steps on the way up to the platform, Wayne feigned tripping up the same step to spare his director from embarrassment.